Two years ago, Eileen Doktorski became enthralled with capturing the aesthetic and symbolic value of garbage.

It began on a routine trip to the dump with her husband. "The whole time we were unloading the truck," she recalls, "I was staring at the ground, thinking: 'Oh my God, there are more diverse textures here than I've seen in my whole life.'"

Doktorksi gained permission to roam around the landfill and made plaster casts of small sections of the debris. Later back in her studio, she turned the casts into bronze sculptures for her "Artifacts of Affluence" series. This piece reveals the corner of a mattress poking out of a rubbish mound.